Drama

58 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 portant (Lemeac, 174, $12.95). C'est mains l'interet litteraire de cette correspondance que la somme des informations qu'on y trouve (notamment sur Haeffely) qui donne ace livre toute sa valeur. Drama JERRY WASSERMAN Despite some major disappointments, the past year has to be reckoned one of the best ever for Canadian drama publication. At least thirty plays or collections came into print, probably more than in any previous year. Blizzard Publishing continued to expand an already impressive prairie playlist in its second season, Summerhill Press initiated a drama list of note, and the format of Toronto's Theatrum magazine was revised to include the annual publication of five new scripts as pullout inserts. Also well represented were stalwarts such as Playwrights Canada, Talonbooks , Coach House, and Canadian Theatre Review. In addition to playtexts, notable new work included The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre and the long-awaited Canada on Stage, 1982-1986, the latest volume of production records for a Canadian theatre that shows itself increasingly healthy, mature, and self-sustaining. Among the year's highlights were John Krizanc's very popular Tamara; Tomson Highway's eagerly awaited sequel to The Rez Sisters, the gloriously titled Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing; Linda Griffiths and Maria Campbell's fascinating collaboration, The Book of Jessica; and the volume of the year, Judith Thompson's selected plays, The Other Side of the Dark. We also got collections from Rex Deverell and Mavor Moore, and the latest (and last?) instalment of David French's Mercer family saga. The phenomenon most evident among the year's drama offerings was the very welcome appearance in force of plays by women writers. Wendy Lill, Sally Clark, Joan MacLeod, and Kelly Rebar, along with the veterans Thompson and Griffiths, led the group of talented playwrights who I believe will dominate Canadian drama for the next decade. The evolution of Canadian drama over the past two decades can be traced through a handful ofthis year's selections. Six Plays byMavor Moore (Talonbooks, 205, $13.95) gives us long overdue access to selected dramatic writings by one of the true pioneers of post-war professional theatre in Canada. Skipping over Moore's musical stage adaptations of the 1950s and 196os, the volume collects five radio and television plays first produced between 1968 and 1974, plus a new unproduced work, 'The Apology.' The latter is Moore's adaptation of Plato's account of the trial of Socrates. A long philosophical monologue broken by one scene of DRAMA 59 Socratic dialogue, the play considers the limits of free speech in a civilized society, the role of the artist as gadfly, and the nature of death. Though the material is intellectually challenging, 'The Apology' lacks dramatic action and is certainly better suited to radio than to stage. The other plays are semi-absurdist parables with strong hints of Beckett and Pinter, characters called XandY, or Man and Woman, and themes of alienation and the impersonality of modern life. (The bestis 'Come Away, Come Away,' in which an Old Man meets a Young Girl who turns out to be Death.) These plays have their roots in the styles and themes of Andrew Allan's Stage radio series, and resemble other Canadian plays of the late 196os, like Ryga's Indian, which originated in radio or TV. Moore's work generally feels derivative and old-fashioned, but it helps us map the places from which our contemporary drama has come and, in some ways, the distance it has travelled. Hrant Alianak's Lucky Strike (Playwrights Canada, 110, $9.95) comes from the end of the first generation of alternate theatre in Toronto, having premiered at Factory Theatre Lab in 1978. Its inspiration is film nair, like George F. Walker's Factory Lab plays of the same period. But whereas Walker adapts film nair subjects and conventions for thematic purposes, Alianak is an obsessive stylist, stripping the material down to a few basic elements which he pushes as far as he can, 'shooting' the same few scenes over and over cinematically, running them forward and backward, playing them from different angles or in close-up, with minor...